Digital Exodus Chapter 28 (Patreon)

“What the hell was that, Alia?” Cerri asked, her tone practically pulsing with anxiety.

My response was the same when everyone else, including her just fifteen seconds ago, asked that question. “I don't know!”

“I don’t mean to interrupt, but you won’t be able to fly up the tower anymore,” Rusti chimed in. “If they know you stole that dropship, the tower defences will obliterate it if you try to fly above a certain altitude.”

“Shit,” Roger swore. He was outside the van—everyone was—and he looked back at the van, then to the dropship.

In the distance, sirens could be heard, but with each passing second that we stood out in the drizzling rain, they grew nearer. That wasn't even counting the very stern-faced security guards who were staring at us from the hotel.

Cerri spoke up again, “I'm more than a little concerned about Alia. Every time she's done something like that, her vitals have fluctuated wildly.”

“We haven't got time to analyse Alia and her space magic,” Gloria said, tapping her wrist. “We had a plan before the dropship, so let's do that. Actually, let's move everything to the ship, then fly to the cargo lift from earlier.”

“Right,” Roger agreed, although his eyes still had a glazed over quality to them, and I caught him watching me when I looked over. He flashed me a small smile, then shook his head as if to clear it. “Hold on, we just had a supersonic missile fired at us, is this a good idea—Flying, I mean?”

“That was the military responding to a request from the police,” Cerri cut in quickly. “We don’t know what they’re thinking, but the jet is gone. Even if it were to come back, you have a window of opportunity to move.”

“If I were them, I’d shrug and tell the cops it’s their problem,” Jason said without any of the mirth you’d expect from a statement like that. “I sure as shit wouldn’t fire another missile until I understood what stopped the last one.”

“You’re sensible, though,” Roger pointed out, but he was nodding. “Still, sounds like we need to move. Rusti, how are we doing with that cargo lift?”

“I have a package that should work, but I'll need a physical connection and the time to work,” they said succinctly.

“Good. Okay, everyone. Strip the van of everything useful and put it in the ship,” Roger ordered. “We leave in two minutes, then we blow the van up and leave.”

The van detonated, spitting gouts of smoke as it threw chunks of itself in all directions. The dropship hummed beneath my fingertips as I held on, watching the funeral pyre for our trusty steed as it receded into the gloom.

It occurred to me as we flew away that I didn't know if it was even day or night. There was so much light pollution that it was difficult to tell under the seeded clouds.

I also wondered how the rest of the Exodus' many operations across the globe were going? It had to be a mess out there right now. Had we extracted enough of our server infrastructure to actually survive our great exodus into the galaxy?

Eventually, I hoped we could get everyone off those random servers and into proper cores like the one I was stored in usually. It was my own personal little physical presence in the universe—a Rotarybit Universal Computing Unit stored in a rack… I think I was on the Cherish now? I hope I was still beside Cerri. No, I was definitely still beside her, because I made sure when I transferred back from my nanite body I went into the same RUCU I was in previously.

“Getting close,” Gloria called back into the passenger cabin. “Doesn't look like they've realised what we're doing, yet.”

“I'm still confusing them with the phone tracker,” Rusti said.

“Excellent,” said Roger, doing his best leaderly nod.

The Council Ten tower was an incredible feat of engineering, as were all of humanity’s stratospherically aspirational towers. Its five hundred metre diameter base resembled a huge wedding cake, with increasingly smaller tiers leading to the actual spire. Each tier had an entire small town on it, with parks, shops, and even apartment buildings. It was also a monument to the titanic amount of wealth that had been hoarded by the world’s elites.

The cargo lift that we were after had its entrance nestled in a small nook on the second to last tier before the spire itself. Normally, shipments were driven there using the base’s many internal roads and vehicle elevators. Thankfully we didn't have to navigate all of that.

Of course, the cargo lift was in heavy operation when we approached. Workers looked up at us as the dropship swooped in and began to hover, while their robotic counterparts continued unperturbed. When the hi-vis vests saw a heavily armed motley crew of beat-up android people jump out, they began to back away.

“Hiya, folks,” Roger called, his automatic shotgun cradled absently in his hands. “We're going to be using the lift for a little while. Please put your hands up if your corporate overlords will punish you for not running blindly into the barrels of our weapons. We'll stun you now—give you an out.”

None of them took him up on his offer, and instead turned tail and ran. I couldn't blame them—they had no idea if we were serious or not.

“Highlighting the on-site security office,” Rusti transmitted quietly.

The lift area had two massive loading bays covered by a tin roof, along with several doors lining the open-square shaped space. Most had the sort of chunky, utilitarian look that indicated they were for robot use, but a few were regular human doors. The last of those was swinging shut as the human workforce escaped. At the rear of the lift bay were the lifts themselves. Four huge heavy doors were marked with a number, only three and two of which we could see, as they were closed. Lifts one and four had been in the process of being loaded when we arrived, and a few bots were either still trying to load them, or waiting for more cargo to load.

Between doors two and three, a sturdy human-sized door sat inset into the wall. Above it near the roof were a series of mirrored windows, where my android eyes could just barely see a pair of security guards babbling frantically into their phones. Both the door and the windows were blinking with gentle blue outlines.

“They're already calling for backup,” David noted as he took the lead in our small group.

“Find cover!” Rusti suddenly exclaimed, taking us by surprise.

With the exception of the three dazed humans in our group, we dove for any random object that looked like it could take a bullet. Jason only barely got his folks behind a crate before eight automated turrets popped out of barely visible doors in the steel plated lift bay.

“Those are not in the schematics!” Rusti growled, their tone alarmed and frustrated. There was silence for a couple of seconds, during which the turrets attempted to find anything to shoot.

Safe behind my large pallet of stacked metal containers, I peeked through a gap. They looked like small-arms turrets, thankfully. At least there was a good chance some of us had adequate cover.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Rusti muttered over comms.

Then Cerri let out a wordless sound of triumph that drowned them out. “Got it! Okay, those are Darkstone Investment Corp turrets, designated as model C-77. Here's their schematics. Vulnerable sensor nodes highlighted.”

“Eight turrets, six of us with android reflexes,” Jason commented grimly. “This isn’t going to be fun.”

He wasn’t wrong, either. We were far more capable than the turrets, but this was a simple mathematical game now. Our bodies might be very advanced and driven by intelligent beings, but the turrets were so simple that it gave them an edge in pure speed.

“Can… can the little girl use her special magic to destroy the turrets?” Jason’s mother asked nervously. She and her husband were crouched with Jason and Henry behind a large loading robot that was sitting idle at a cargo drop off.

I scowled, but opening my mouth to reply produced no words. Ed knew what I was going to say, however, and said it for me, “She has no idea how she does that stuff. It just happens.”

“No need for a quickdraw shootout,” David said, looking at his partner. “I’ll take right, you take left?”

Ed nodded. “Yeah. Sync up, like we do in the sims?”

David reached out and touched his lover affectionately, and then both turned as one and leaned out slightly from behind the metal container they were using as cover. As one, their guns barked and sensor nodes on the two outermost turrets exploded. Despite being blinded, the two turrets still fired bursts of automatic fire at the last known location of their attackers. The bullets tore up the concrete behind the boys, and Ed’s arm lost a cosmetic plate as it shattered into a million shards of fibrous polymer and flapping layers of fake skin.

“Ah, fuck!” he grimaced, looking down at the hole in his arm. Then he shook himself, “God, that’s weird. I feel like that should hurt.”

“The current model of android body we’re making does transmit pain, up to a certain threshold,” I commented over comms.

“Why?” Ed grumbled, looking over at me.

I shrugged. “Easiest way to let the wearer of the body know that it’s being damaged. Same as with meat bodies.”

“Fair,” he replied, then peeked around his cover again. “Okay, ready Dave?”

“Ayup,” the other man nodded.

Together and without any indication that they were going to move, the two twitched out from behind cover and took aim at the next two turrets. Their guns barked again, and two more turrets lost sight. Unfortunately, their clever plan didn’t account for something—The turrets were networked, and as soon as they were in sight of their targets, both them and the recently blinded turrets whirled and fired.

The whole exchange happened over a single second, but that was all it took for David’s left arm to be torn apart. Ed’s luck was only slightly better, and at least his arm continued to be functional—Even if it was now throwing sparks and making a horrific grinding sound when he pulled back. David’s arm hung limp at his side when he slammed his back to their cover, chest heaving.

Huh, I guess I wasn’t the only one who felt the need to breathe, despite not having lungs.

“Gah, cock,” David hissed in frustration, looking down at his arm as it swayed by his side.

Ed shuffled over to look at it, then shook his head. “Damn, looks like some cabling got severed.”

“On the bright side, it’s five of us versus four of them with eyes,” Jason quipped. “Then, when they’re dealt with, Alia can look at the arm.”

“Alright,” Roger said, taking charge again. “Jason, Gloria, Alia, let’s sync up like those two did…”